Joe Sixpack

Over the past few decades, the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts. This expulsion has had many causes. But the big one is this: Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare….What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole.

….[Sarah] Palin is smart, politically skilled, courageous and likable. Her convention and debate performances were impressive. But no American politician plays the class-warfare card as constantly as Palin. Nobody so relentlessly divides the world between the “normal Joe Sixpack American” and the coastal elite.

Sure, it would have been nice if Brooks had noticed this a little earlier. And it’s not the hardest hitting column on the subject of culture war politics we’ve ever seen. Still, this stuff isn’t easy to write about your own side. It’s a pretty decent piece.